A Ration of Gruel (1 Letter)
The New York Times
Published: Jan 06, 2009
To the Editor:
“In Reality, Oliver’s Diet Wasn’t Truly Dickensian” (Dec. 30) says Oliver Twist’s hunger was fiction. Perhaps, but Dickens knew that workhouse boys were fed inadequately.
Workhouse diets of bread, potatoes, meat and cheese were hardly optimal. Without fruit and vegetables other than potatoes, the diets lacked vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber, if not calories. That is why they caused poor children in Dickens’s time, as well as now, to display overt signs of nutrient deficiencies along with stunting, wasting and greater susceptibility to infectious diseases.
Dickens may have exaggerated, but his point still holds: kids should not go hungry.
Marion Nestle
New York
The writer is a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University.
© The New York Times. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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